Lesson 9: Working Little
In the strange way of adult night classes, we had a large class last week, but tonight, only two of us show up: myself, and Faith, a teacher of gifted fifth- and sixth-graders. At first I wonder where everyone else is, but as soon as Annette begins the lesson, I don't care. I quickly notice the advantages of having a semi-private lesson.
For one thing, I can hear the music much better. The studio owns some powerful audio gear, but the technophobic ballet teacher refuses to let it be installed in this room. That means when Annette teaches in this room, she's stuck with a pair of piddly speakers you can hear only when you're right in front of them. But tonight, with only two students rather than nine, I can hear the beat no matter where we wander.
Second, I can hear my own tapping much better. As Faith and I perform Annette's assignments, I'm surprised to find I have not actually mastered some of what I thought I had. You would think someone who has been ambulatory for over four decades could find the floor without looking. You would be wrong. I shoot my foot out for a Shuffle that should produce two sharp taps, but instead I get a smeary shhh. My shoe and the floor are shushing me. I try not to let this dim my enthusiasm.
Third, with fewer students, Annette can focus more on our specific problems. As we Shuffle to "Hard-Hearted Hannah," Annette offers small suggestions that improve our ungainly movements: "See how you pull your foot back there? You don't need to cock it before a Shuffle; just strike." "Don't be afraid to use your ankle muscles; that's how your foot knows what to do!" "You'll balance better if you lean forward slightly."
These little tips quickly accumulate into big improvement in our dancing. Spurred by our progress, Annette plays faster-tempo music, "I Like That" by Houston. The faster pace loses me within seconds. My steps stop resembling dancing. My feet flail at the floor as if I bear it a grudge. Faith similarly paws the ground.
Annette stops the music. "I haven't talked to you about working little," she says. "When the music speeds up, in order to get the taps out in time, you have to use smaller motions. You can do a lot of work, like this" -- she fires off four Shuffles, jerking her whole leg back and forth in exaggerated swings -- "or you can do it like this." She repeats the four Shuffles, this time barely moving from the knee down. The tapping sounds identical. "Unless a choreographer is having you move big in order to communicate something stylistically, work little. Overall, you should see how little motion you can make while still getting the sound. Let's try it."
I had been so worried about keeping my balance and getting the sounds out on the beat, I had never thought of trying to be efficient about it. She gives us a combination to do, and I try making the sounds economically. It feels like a miracle. I thought I had to flap my whole leg in order to get a satisfying whap! out of the floor. I find I can lift my foot a half inch and spank the ground with my toes, using my ankle muscles, and get just as loud and crisp a sound. The man in the wall mirror is grinning. He also looks far more like a dancer than ever before.
"Working little" seems like a breakthrough. All the way home, I feel exhilarated at the potential of trying all the steps again while working little. Simultaneously, I feel like an idiot for having to be told about it. I'm trying to learn an art form that is supposed to look elegant, but I hadn't thought of trying to move efficiently. Duh.
For the next few days, all I can think of is working little. As I relax with a DVD at home, I begin to see that I'm not the only one who has failed to seek efficiency.
In the fascinating 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara describes a problem the U.S. military faced during World War II. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan transformed itself into a foe that had to be confronted. But U.S. military strategists, their minds mired in the challenges of defeating Hitler in Europe, could not think of a way to reach Japan and strike back.
A huge new cargo plane had just been invented, and China also wanted to see Japan defeated. So the U.S. persuaded China to build an air strip for the gigantic cargo plane. We intended to fly the cargo plane from India to China, bringing enough fuel to leave a tanker of fuel on the Chinese air strip, then fly back to India. After weeks of doing this, there should be enough fuel in China to launch air attacks against Japan.
Building the Chinese air strip on rocky land took weeks. The Chinese government had convict laborers break the boulders into shale, by hand. Eventually the landing strip, looking more like a gravel quarry than an airport, was deemed ready. The cargo planes started the long flight from India to China.
On paper, the plan worked. In practice, it stunk. By the time the cargo planes landed in China, they didn't have any extra fuel. Sometimes if the winds were right, a cargo plane might deliver some fuel. But soon another flight would need that fuel simply to return home. After months of work, the plan was a bust.
Only then did some genius realize we could hop our planes to Japan the same way the Japanese had gotten theirs to Hawaii: by stopping at Pacific islands along the way. By "thinking little," we soon defeated Japan. McNamara's point was that we had gotten so caught up in Might, we hadn't even thought about efficiency.
The more I thought about working little, the more ways I could apply it. Anyone who has saved up a big jar of change and discovered they could buy something important with all those pennies, nickels, and dimes knows what I'm talking about. But I live in America, the land where only the biggest, the most, the loudest, the "mega," makes news. Our business leaders keep encouraging us to "Focus on the big picture!" That's oxymoronic. That's saying, "Emphasize everything!" Or, as the T-shirt I saw at Defcon 12 put it, "Everything louder than everything else!" Working little isn't flashy. It's counter-intuitive. But when the grand big picture isn't working out, little is what you need.
At work, one of the reporters complained it was impossible to fit what he wanted to say into his allotted 400 words. When I asked him what point he was trying to make, he gave me four points. Working little was the answer. That word count allowed room to develop only one point convincingly. He stripped his article down to its most important point and had it done later that same hour. It was stronger because of its narrow focus, and customers wrote in both arguing with it and praising it.
Ann Lamott, from Bird by Bird: "All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.... E. L. Doctorow once said that 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard."
Sometimes little is good. "Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things;" wrote Epictetus, a first-century philosopher, "and thence proceed to greater." ##
For one thing, I can hear the music much better. The studio owns some powerful audio gear, but the technophobic ballet teacher refuses to let it be installed in this room. That means when Annette teaches in this room, she's stuck with a pair of piddly speakers you can hear only when you're right in front of them. But tonight, with only two students rather than nine, I can hear the beat no matter where we wander.
Second, I can hear my own tapping much better. As Faith and I perform Annette's assignments, I'm surprised to find I have not actually mastered some of what I thought I had. You would think someone who has been ambulatory for over four decades could find the floor without looking. You would be wrong. I shoot my foot out for a Shuffle that should produce two sharp taps, but instead I get a smeary shhh. My shoe and the floor are shushing me. I try not to let this dim my enthusiasm.
Third, with fewer students, Annette can focus more on our specific problems. As we Shuffle to "Hard-Hearted Hannah," Annette offers small suggestions that improve our ungainly movements: "See how you pull your foot back there? You don't need to cock it before a Shuffle; just strike." "Don't be afraid to use your ankle muscles; that's how your foot knows what to do!" "You'll balance better if you lean forward slightly."
These little tips quickly accumulate into big improvement in our dancing. Spurred by our progress, Annette plays faster-tempo music, "I Like That" by Houston. The faster pace loses me within seconds. My steps stop resembling dancing. My feet flail at the floor as if I bear it a grudge. Faith similarly paws the ground.
Annette stops the music. "I haven't talked to you about working little," she says. "When the music speeds up, in order to get the taps out in time, you have to use smaller motions. You can do a lot of work, like this" -- she fires off four Shuffles, jerking her whole leg back and forth in exaggerated swings -- "or you can do it like this." She repeats the four Shuffles, this time barely moving from the knee down. The tapping sounds identical. "Unless a choreographer is having you move big in order to communicate something stylistically, work little. Overall, you should see how little motion you can make while still getting the sound. Let's try it."
I had been so worried about keeping my balance and getting the sounds out on the beat, I had never thought of trying to be efficient about it. She gives us a combination to do, and I try making the sounds economically. It feels like a miracle. I thought I had to flap my whole leg in order to get a satisfying whap! out of the floor. I find I can lift my foot a half inch and spank the ground with my toes, using my ankle muscles, and get just as loud and crisp a sound. The man in the wall mirror is grinning. He also looks far more like a dancer than ever before.
"Working little" seems like a breakthrough. All the way home, I feel exhilarated at the potential of trying all the steps again while working little. Simultaneously, I feel like an idiot for having to be told about it. I'm trying to learn an art form that is supposed to look elegant, but I hadn't thought of trying to move efficiently. Duh.
For the next few days, all I can think of is working little. As I relax with a DVD at home, I begin to see that I'm not the only one who has failed to seek efficiency.
In the fascinating 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara describes a problem the U.S. military faced during World War II. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan transformed itself into a foe that had to be confronted. But U.S. military strategists, their minds mired in the challenges of defeating Hitler in Europe, could not think of a way to reach Japan and strike back.
A huge new cargo plane had just been invented, and China also wanted to see Japan defeated. So the U.S. persuaded China to build an air strip for the gigantic cargo plane. We intended to fly the cargo plane from India to China, bringing enough fuel to leave a tanker of fuel on the Chinese air strip, then fly back to India. After weeks of doing this, there should be enough fuel in China to launch air attacks against Japan.
Building the Chinese air strip on rocky land took weeks. The Chinese government had convict laborers break the boulders into shale, by hand. Eventually the landing strip, looking more like a gravel quarry than an airport, was deemed ready. The cargo planes started the long flight from India to China.
On paper, the plan worked. In practice, it stunk. By the time the cargo planes landed in China, they didn't have any extra fuel. Sometimes if the winds were right, a cargo plane might deliver some fuel. But soon another flight would need that fuel simply to return home. After months of work, the plan was a bust.
Only then did some genius realize we could hop our planes to Japan the same way the Japanese had gotten theirs to Hawaii: by stopping at Pacific islands along the way. By "thinking little," we soon defeated Japan. McNamara's point was that we had gotten so caught up in Might, we hadn't even thought about efficiency.
The more I thought about working little, the more ways I could apply it. Anyone who has saved up a big jar of change and discovered they could buy something important with all those pennies, nickels, and dimes knows what I'm talking about. But I live in America, the land where only the biggest, the most, the loudest, the "mega," makes news. Our business leaders keep encouraging us to "Focus on the big picture!" That's oxymoronic. That's saying, "Emphasize everything!" Or, as the T-shirt I saw at Defcon 12 put it, "Everything louder than everything else!" Working little isn't flashy. It's counter-intuitive. But when the grand big picture isn't working out, little is what you need.
At work, one of the reporters complained it was impossible to fit what he wanted to say into his allotted 400 words. When I asked him what point he was trying to make, he gave me four points. Working little was the answer. That word count allowed room to develop only one point convincingly. He stripped his article down to its most important point and had it done later that same hour. It was stronger because of its narrow focus, and customers wrote in both arguing with it and praising it.
Ann Lamott, from Bird by Bird: "All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.... E. L. Doctorow once said that 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard."
Sometimes little is good. "Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things;" wrote Epictetus, a first-century philosopher, "and thence proceed to greater." ##
posted by ScottPinzonTest at 7:17 PM
1 Comments:
Well worth remembering. Thanks. I wonder if other cultures have an easier time with this. I wonder if there's a culture in the world where the value of working little is as embedded in the communal consciousness as working big is in our own. Working little, by the way, is also the only way to train for a marathon. You start out by running a short period of time--say, ten minutes. The next day you cross-train. The day after that you run a little longer, maybe twelve and half minutes, and so on until you're able to run for as long as it takes to cover twenty-six miles. If you start out by trying to run twenty-six miles, or even half that, you're sunk.
While I was on the rowing machine this morning, I set up all sorts of incremental goals. I remember thinking, "Okay. I'm twenty seconds until I'm three minutes away from the halfway point of this workout." At that point I actually had 13 minutes and 20 seconds left of rowing time, but if I had thought about that, I would given up in a heartbeat. Instead, I focused on the fact that I had 20 seconds left until the next time marker, and then I did it all over again, always shooting for a goal a little ways out until I completed all twenty minutes of rowing.
By the way, now that you've discussed how Lamott's chapter "Short Assignments" applies to tapping, I see something equally important to learn about tapping from her chapter titled "Shitty First Drafts"!
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